Landreth is imploring the council to issue a formal apology to the staff and make a statement regarding the council code of conduct and rules of procedure for the public at the next meeting.

The interaction occurred during a special committee meeting held Wednesday on homelessness. Joe Devries, an assistant to the city administrator, was scheduled to give an informational report on the city’s encampment management policy.

Before his presentation, committee members listened to public comment. Needa Bee, founder of the Village, a group of volunteers who support homeless people, chastized DeVries for the city’s homeless policies.

“You are a murderer,” Bee said. “Your administration has a murderer in their midst. People have died, literally died, because they’ve been left on the steet with nothing.”

Committee Chairman Loren Taylor told Bee to direct her comments to the chairperson. As DeVries started to leave the council chambers, a woman, who spoke later during public comment, ran after him.

She grabbed DeVries by the arm and said, “You are not allowed to leave.”

DeVries responded, “Don’t touch me.” Councilwoman Lynette Gibson McElhaney, who was standing nearby, stepped in front of the woman as DeVries left the room.

Landreth told council members Thursday that their silence during the interaction was “deafening,” according to an email obtained by The Chronicle. Besides Taylor and McElhaney, other council members present were Rebecca Kaplan and Nikki Fortunato Bas.

“City staff should not be subjected to personal attacks of any nature during the course of their workday, and the silence from the Councilmembers at that meeting to control the inappropriate behavior was deafening,” she said.

“In remaining silent to the personal attacks against staff last night, the Councilmembers were complicit,” Landreth wrote. “City employees should not be disrespected in this manner, and the City as the employer has the responsibility to prevent this from happening in the future.”

After DeVries left the meeting, it continued with more public comment before council members began discussing the city’s homeless policies.

McElhaney addressed the claims made about DeVries in the meeting. She reminded “the community and colleagues” to “find a different language that is not attacking” and said it’s “easy to villify” city staff working on homelessness.

“I do think it’s ineffective hyperbole to say that any of us who are paid on a W2 are murdering our relatives and our friends and our neighbors,” she said. “I don’t think that that invites solutions in any kind of way and it can be extraordinarily demoralizing.”

She said that DeVries didn’t come into “this work to be villified as somebody who is uncaring or who is demonic in some ways that is responsible for the death of people.”

During the meeting, Taylor said it was important to act with humanity.

“We do need to focus on the humanity across all sides of the table and as we respond and engage with folks, who are putting a lot of effort to try help solve this, even if we disagree,” Taylor said.

Also at the meeting, Maraskeshia Smith, an assistant to the city administrator, said she was “appalled” and “disappointed” about what happened in the meeting.

“When no one on this dais speaks up for a member of our staff, it is unacceptable,” she said. “I will not tolerate any member of the public touching a member of my staff and vice versa. I shouldn’t have to address it. It should be addressed here and I should work for an organization that believes in their staff enough to protect them.”

Sarah Ravani covers Oakland and the East Bay at The San Francisco Chronicle. She joined The Chronicle in 2016 after graduating from Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism. Previously, she covered breaking news and crime for The Chronicle. She has provided coverage on wildfires, mass shootings, the fatal shooting of police officers and massive floods in the North Bay.